Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey still ‘extremely confident’ despite 3-1 deficit vs. Knicks

PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers have their backs against the wall.

The New York Knicks came out on top in Game 4 despite Mitchell Robinson’s absence and Bojan Bogdanovic’s in-game injury. The Sixers scored just 16 points in the fourth quarter, only one of which came from Joel Embiid, and fell into a 3-1 series deficit. With Game 5 coming in Madison Square Garden on Tuesday, the 76ers’ season is dangerously close to coming to an end.

Embiid played the entire second half and the Sixers won his minutes. But the damage of the minutes when he sat on top of a flat performance from the whole squad in the fourth quarter has put their season on the brink of collapse.

Maxey said that the Sixers are still “extremely confident” in their ability to make this series a fight.

“It’s a confident group over there, honestly, just because we’ve been through a lot this year and we know that,” Maxey said. “When adversity hits, we know how to bounce back from it. I think we feel that we’re very capable of winning three games in a row. I would say that first and foremost.

“We’ve been very, very, very close in a lot of these games — Game 2 and this game, for sure, it feels like we should have won,” he continued. “So we’ll take that confidence over there and try to go win. That’s all we can do. Gotta go try to go get one game first in The Garden to come back here, get one game and then we’ll see what happens in Game 7.”

It is true that the Sixers have had several season’s worth of obstacles smushed into one in the 2023-24 campaign. Navigating the James Harden trade early in the season, overcoming a plethora of injuries and making some major adjustments to the roster midway through the season — all in the first season for a new head coach — made it tough to mesh as a unit. While that doesn’t totally excuse their shortcomings against the Knicks, it has given them a taste of hardships and experience in how to fight through it.

Embiid said the Sixers have “no pressure” going forward. Like Maxey, he’s looking for the Sixers to take it one step at a time.

“One at a time,” he said. “We know we’re good enough. Tonight, we didn’t make shots so we just gotta keep trusting ourselves. We know the pace was not good in the fourth quarter so we gotta play faster and, like I said, keep trusting each other and go out and play. We got no pressure. We’re the [No.] 7 seed, down 3-1, a lot of guys are hurt. I don’t know why we would feel the pressure, so we should just go out and play our best basketball.”

The 76ers are, of course, not a typical seventh seed because Embiid’s lengthy absence sent the team into a spiral down the standings. Still, they were widely seen as one of the Eastern Conference’s best teams that had a shot to beat the Knicks. They still do, even if it’s shrinking.

Although a 3-1 series almost always ends with the leading team finishing the job, the Sixers are not far away from this Knicks team. Each game has been close. If things start bouncing Philly’s way, it’s not crazy to see this series going the distance. And anything goes in a Game 7.

There’s no other stance for the stars of a team to take than to express confidence in their squad. When the waters are the most dangerous, you need the steadiest hands to row forward and make it as far through the storm as possible. The 76ers are down right now but they are still not yet out. So long as that’s the case, Embiid, Maxey and the team will remain confident in themselves.